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Nature Medicine 11, 469 - 470 (2005)
doi:10.1038/nm0505-469

HIV swiftly guts the immune system

Ronald S Veazey1 & Andrew A Lackner1

  1. The authors are at the Tulane National Primate Research Center, Tulane University School of Medicine, Covington, Louisiana 70433, USA. e-mail: rveazey@tulane.edu


Two studies show that SIV directly kills massive numbers of immune cells in the gut within days of infection. The results come on the heels of similarly dramatic findings for HIV, and could radically shift the focus of HIV research and therapy.


For years, some AIDS researchers have suspected that the search for answers has been focusing in the wrong place—that the gut and other mucosal tissues, and not the blood, is the major site of HIV infection and CD4+ T cell loss. Two recent reports in Nature should put doubts about this view to rest, and further emphasize the speed with which HIV disarms the immune system.

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